


Training Tales

by Calico, Habernero



Series: Inopportune Moments [2]
Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Missing Scene, Slow Burn, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-02 22:18:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4075840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calico/pseuds/Calico, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Habernero/pseuds/Habernero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of course as soon as Harry put Eggsy forward as a candidate, things became simple: he could not touch him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Still canon compliant, if you squint.
> 
> Thanks to julad and wreathed.

Of course as soon as Harry put Eggsy forward as a candidate, things became simple: he could not touch him. Even if Eggsy begged - and Harry had a feeling Eggsy could beg very nicely when pressed - it would be out of the question. Fraternisation between knights was one thing, but to compromise the candidate, to distract them, at this crucial time—it was unthinkable. 

Harry nevertheless spent quite a lot of time thinking about it.

***

That wasn’t to say there was no mileage in a mild flirtation, of course. Harry knew from personal experience that many candidates could find such a thing fairly… motivational.

“I hate this fucking tartan onesie,” Eggsy muttered, tugging at the collar of his standard-issue Kingsman training jumpsuit. He’d managed to pull it askew and fold one leaf of the collar under itself - the result, Harry suspected, of some fairly relentless fidgeting against the new, stiff fabric. 

Harry didn’t make himself resist. He moved closer. “Allow me,” he said, reaching for Eggsy’s wrists and putting his arms down to his sides, enjoying the way Eggsy stilled at his touch. 

Harry reached around the back of Eggsy’s neck with both hands, then smoothed the collar slowly out between his fingers, uncurling the folded part, not unaware of Eggsy’s gaze becoming heavy, heated. 

“Better,” Harry pronounced, with a small nod. 

He didn’t step away, and Eggsy didn’t step back. Eggsy’s gaze darted up and down, between Harry’s mouth and his eyes. 

“Looking the part is half the battle,” Harry said, as if he hadn’t noticed. 

Eggsy’s voice was slightly husky. “What’s the other half?”

“Ultra-violence,” Harry said, and that broke the spell; Eggsy grinned, glancing at the ceiling as if to give cheeky thanks to some unseen deity. 

“Bring. It. On.”

***

That night, Harry’s bed felt very wide. He lay in the middle of it, one arm above his head, one knee drawn up under the covers, one hand curled around the base of his erection. It had been coming and going all day; he hadn’t started getting hard _every_ time Eggsy sent him that particular charged side-smile, all damp lips and lowered eyelashes, but it had been a near thing. And in a day in which they had visited five different types of essential weaponry training - marksmanship, archery, short-sword, épée, and _canne de combat_ \- Eggsy had been side-smiling a _lot_.

Harry had almost lost it when Eggsy balanced a 9mm handgun on the flat of his forearm and picked off the five targets one by one: five perfect shots without a hesitation between them.

“Very good,” he’d said, and then felt his blood rush downwards when Eggsy turned, looked him in the eye, and gave the muzzle of the gun a showy kiss.

“Didn’t quit the Marines without pickin’ up a couple of skills…”

In bed, Harry’s cock became harder at the memory. The thought of Eggsy in his Marines uniform didn’t hurt, but the look in his eyes was the main thing: the blunt, brazen flirtation of someone completely unapologetic about what they wanted. If Harry had asked, Eggsy would have licked that gun, sucked on it, teased it with his tongue - Harry had no doubt about it. If Harry had asked, he was certain he could have Eggsy right here in his bed right now. He could have one hand in Eggsy’s hair, guiding his face down his chest, steering him towards his dick. He could have those damp lips brushing over his skin, have a series of those showy kisses pressed along his cock; he could have the pleasure of watching Eggsy’s eyelashes lowering as he opened his mouth and let Harry push inside. 

Harry dragged in a deep breath and started stroking himself. 

All he would have to do was let himself ask.

***

“He’s pretty rough around the edges,” Merlin said, sitting back in Harry’s second-favourite armchair and taking a sip of a rather nice ice wine Harry had brought back from a three-day expedition to Dusseldorf posing as an eccentric Austrian art critic.

Harry took a sip of his own wine, rolled it around his mouth, then shrugged and swallowed. “That’s to be expected,” he said. “I’m not sure he’s ever set foot outside the M25.” 

“I’m not sure he’s ever been North of the River,” Merlin retorted, and even though it was almost exactly the same sentiment Harry himself had expressed, he found himself bristling. 

“Unlike the light brigade of chinless wonders,” he said, stroking his thumbnail against the etched edge of his glass, “who’ve trotted all over the world and yet can’t seem to generate an original thought between them.” 

Merlin’s mouth twitched. “Think your bias is showing.”

“I’m allowed to be biased,” Harry said, sipping again. It really had a lovely taste: crisp and cold and sweet at once, a success story of grapes being allowed to freeze on the vine. “I have someone in the ring.” 

On the coffee table, his phone started buzzing; Eggsy. The dart of warmth that went through him was hopefully invisible. “Speak of the devil,” he said, and lifted the phone to his ear. “Yes?”

“Harry,” Eggsy said, fervently. “You gotta help me.”

The sound of his voice, after three days abroad, was lovely. Harry took another sip and then set his glass down, keeping his expression mild. “How so?”

“We’re on this fucking orienteering challenge on fucking Dartmoor, and we’ve gotta like navigate and shit, and fucking Rufus’s chucked my fucking bag in the fucking river!”

A smirk played at the corner of Harry’s mouth. “How fucking annoying.”

“Yeah!” Eggsy said, apparently not hearing the mimicry. “Anyway, everything’s wrecked, the others are gone and it’s getting dark and I’m lost - you gotta help me.”

Harry stood up and strode to the window, rested his free hand against the frame, looking out at twinkling city lights in the gathering darkness. Not looking at Merlin. “Dear boy, I’m in London. I’m not sure how I can help. ” 

“Well - you got to, alright? I’m supposed to be going East to meet a road and I’ve not got no map or compass or torch or fucking… _anything_.”

Harry couldn’t help but smile a bit at Eggsy’s unwavering faith in him. “You apparently have a phone.”

“Mate, it’s a Nokia 3610. It’s about as much use as a walkie-talkie.”

“Which direction was the sunset? That normally happens in a westerly direction.”

“I dunno - I was a bit busy to be looking at a fucking sunset, yeah?”

“Right, of course. Any landmarks?”

“There’s some hills and shit,” Eggsy said, “and… a river.” 

“Where does the river go? Does it run East-West or North-South?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

“Okay,” Harry said, restraining a broader smile. “Some lessons to be learned here. Later,” he added, at Eggsy’s outraged cursing. “For now - can you see the stars?”

“Yes, because it is fucking nighttime!”

Harry could picture him, one arm wrapped around himself, scowling at the sky. “More specifically,” he said, “can you see Polaris, the North star?”

“I can see… _some_ stars,” Eggsy said, grudgingly. 

“Okay,” Harry said. He searched the small patch of sky visible from his window. “Right, fine. Can you see Orion’s belt? The first star in the row is called Mintaka, and rises very close to due East. If you can spot it—”

“I can’t,” Eggsy put in.

“—You can make off in that direction and know in full confidence that you are heading East as planned.”

“I don’t know what you’re on about.”

Maybe there were clouds. “How about the Plough? Or Casseopeia?”

“Casseo-what?”

“Didn’t they teach you this in the Marines?” Harry asked, genuinely surprised. 

“Must’ve missed that day,” Eggsy snapped, and Harry had the familiar vertiginous feeling of glimpsing the gulf of privilege between them. He’d known the basic constellations since… Cubs, probably, long before upgrading that baseline understanding with a nighttime navigation course when he was getting his Mariner’s License. But then Eggsy’s childhood would hardly have featured the Boy Scouts.

“Okay,” Harry said, “scan the sky. Can you see a group of stars that look like the outline of a saucepan, a little brighter than the others?”

There was silence for a moment, then Eggsy made a frustrated noise. “I don’t know! There’s a fuckton of stars, but they’re just… stars! I can’t see no fucking saucepan - I give up, Harry, alright? I fucking—”

“Eggsy,” Harry said, lowering his voice into the register that always seemed to get results, and sure enough the tirade cut off, “I need you to focus. I can help you if you’ll work with me. Are you willing to try?”

“Yeah,” Eggsy said. 

Harry switched his phone into his left hand. “Is there enough light for you to see your right hand?”

“Yeah.”

“I want you to hold it in front of you, palm up, fingers outstretched.”

“O-kay…”

“Now,” Harry said, conscious of Merlin behind him but knowing, bone-deep, that this was the quickest way, “imagine I’m there with you. I’m going to trace a shape on your hand, and I want you to remember it. Okay?”

“Okay,” Eggsy said again, more readily now. 

“I’m going to start by touching the first fingertip on your right hand,” Harry said, holding up his own hand for landmarks. Hopefully, Merlin would have stopped listening by now. “That’s _one_.”

“One.”

“Now sliding along to the first joint of that finger - that’s _two_ \- and then the middle joint - _three_.”

“‘Kay.”

“The place that finger joins the palm of your hand - _four_. Then trace down to the base of your little finger - _five_. You still with me?”

“So with you,” Eggsy said, and Harry felt a dark flicker of satisfaction. If tracing shapes onto Eggsy’s skin was an effective educational technique, there were any number of constellations he could teach him… 

He refocused on the task at present. “Draw straight across the edge of your hand, to where the palm meets the wrist - that’s _six_ \- and then up to the heel of your thumb - that’s _seven_ \- the final star in the sequence. That’s approximately the saucepan shape I was asking you to look for, otherwise known as The Plough. Can you find it in the night sky?”

There was a pause. “Yeah,” Eggsy said, eventually. “Er, in what world is that a saucepan?”

Harry smiled. “Good. Now if you continue straight up from the seventh star - as if travelling up your outstretched thumb - there will be another star at roughly the level of your thumbnail. _That_ is Polaris, the North star, which denotes true North, and has been used by travellers to navigate at night since the dawn of cartography.”

“Huh.” Eggsy said, and Harry could hear the smile breaking out. “Handy.”

Harry laughed. “Quite,” he said. “Any other way I can be of assistance?”

“Nah,” Eggsy said, and Harry could hear the rustling of footsteps through undergrowth, “I’ve got it from here, fanks though.”

“Any time,” Harry said.

“I’ll make it up to you,” Eggsy said, and maybe it was because he was moving now but his voice had more breath in it, making the hairs stand up on the back of Harry’s neck.

“That, ah, isn’t necessary,” Harry said, even as his mind provided images of various ways in which Eggsy could make it up to him. 

“No, I will,” Eggsy insisted, and Harry could hear him grinning again. “By this time tomorrow, yeah? I’ll send you a picture of Rufus on his arse in a river.”

Harry snorted. “I look forward to it.”

“Bye,” Eggsy said, and hung up, and Harry held the phone at his ear for a moment longer, picturing him running, undaunted in the dark now he’d had a nudge in the right direction. 

“Right,” he said, slipping the phone into his inside pocket and turning back to Merlin. “Sorry about that. Something of a crisis.”

Merlin had finished his wine, was balancing the empty glass on his thigh. He raised his eyebrows. “Stargazing, Galahad?”

“Just some basic navigation techniques,” Harry demurred. “Can I top up your glass?”

Merlin held it out for him. “You’re very patient with him,” he said, as Harry poured, keeping his eyes on the stream of dark wine, conscious of Merlin watching his face.

“Not really,” Harry said, and met his eyes evenly. “He only ever needs to be told something once, provided it’s said in the right way.”

Merlin gave him a sly smile and then said, in a worryingly good approximation of Harry’s voice, “ _Imagine I’m there with you_ …” 

Ah. So he had been listening. Harry gave him an innocent look. “He’s a visual learner.” 

“He’s infatuated,” Merlin shot back.

“Nonsense,” Harry said smoothly, with a deeper sip of wine. “If anything, I’m a father figure.”

Merlin snorted. “If you’re a father figure, that boy’s got some serious daddy issues.”

Harry didn’t give an inch. “Merlin, your imagination remains as vivid as ever,” he said. “Whatever you’re smoking, you must let me try it some time.”

***

The picture was of Rufus pulling himself up out of a muddy lake, face shiny and red, hair like a wet duck’s arse, fistfuls of slime and grass between his fingers as he scrambled back onto the bank. Eggsy had framed it with his own thumb stuck up in the foreground, dwarfing Rufus’s entire body and giving a cheery “fuck this guy in particular” air to proceedings.

Harry received the picture on his phone during his breakfast on a flight back from the Channel Islands, where he’d been dismanteling a small ring of particularly unpleasant drug traffickers. It had been a tiresome and occasionally distressing trip, and the picture made him laugh; therefore it was the easiest thing in the world to reply: 

_Oh, very good, Eggsy. Orienteering clearly agreeing with you after all. Will you be finished in time to join me tonight for a motivational education in fine French wines?_

Eggsy’s reply was swift and forthright.

_Fuck yes! Harry you ledge :D_

***

Wine tasting with Eggsy was exactly as chaotic and irreverent as Harry should have expected. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

“…And then rounds out into a traditional steely finish, that—”

“Bit like WD-40,” Eggsy said, making faces around a mouthful of a young _Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos_ and then swallowing and smacking his lips.

“I’m sure the monks would be flattered by the comparison,” Harry said, taking a larger sip with plenty of oxygen to let the flavours properly wash around his mouth, then turning discreetly to use the spittoon. “How would you say it compares to the _Chateau Genot-Boulanger_?”

“What one was that again?”

“The one you felt was most reminiscent of, how did you phrase it… _like the juice off Nan’s fruit salad_ , I think were your precise words.”

“Oh right, yeah,” Eggsy said, nodding eagerly. “That was lush.” He frowned at the half dozen bottles spread out on the table in front of them, then at the glass in his hand. “Yeah, I reckon the fruit salad one was the best one so far. This monk one,” he said, shaking his head as his glass as if deeply disappointed, “total let down.” 

He drained it anyway, with a grimace. 

“Duly noted,” Harry said, suppressing a smile. “Shall we move on to the reds?”

Eggsy’s eyes gleamed. “ _Get in_.” 

An exceptionally fine Burgundy Pinot Noir was rejected as “weird chalk” and a prized first growth from Bordeaux was “just wine, innit?” so Harry forgave himself for the warm, pleased feeling he got when Eggsy took a deep slurp of a 1983 _Chateau Latour_ and then looked at him, wide-eyed. 

“Mate. That is fucking good.”

“From the regions of Pauillac and Bordeaux,” Harry said, and took a sip himself. It _was_ fucking good: mature and complex, its rich herbaceous juiciness balanced with darker notes of leather and caramel. “I agree. Very fine.”

Eggsy drank half his glass and then paused, squinting and moving his lips. He was, Harry realised, rolling the wine around his mouth, trying out the motions Harry had spent twenty painstaking minutes trying to explain to him before giving it up as a hopeless endeavour. 

Harry waited, taking another sip and swallowing before remembering he was supposed to be spitting it out. 

Eventually, Eggsy swallowed and licked his lips. “Yeah, alright,” he said. “It’s, uh… a bit blackberry.” 

“It is, isn’t it,” Harry said, thinking _hedgerow_ and _autumnal fruits_ and _sandalwood_. “What would you drink it with?”

Eggsy looked at him like he was absolutely insane. Then considered. Then, “I guess you could make, like, whassitcalled? Sangria.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of roasted duck or pheasant, a couple of good cheeses,” Harry said. “You’re right, of course - it would make a very lavish Sangria. Although I suspect the French _might_ not approve.”

He took another mouthful, properly aerated, savoured for a few seconds, then used the spittoon again. 

Eggsy shook his head mournfully. “Shame.”

“If you drink every time it dulls the palette.”

“Mine was pretty fucking dull to begin with.”

“Everything can be taught. And the best teacher is participation,” Harry said, with a negligent wave at the bottles arrayed across the table. “All this might be meaningless now, but when you’re at an Archduke’s banqueting table opposite a corrupt dignitary who is trying to detect the spy in their midst, it’ll come back to you.”

Eggsy waggled his eyebrows. “Or I’ll come back at them,” he said, miming a few shots with an imaginary - and very large - gun. 

“Or you’ll come back at them,” Harry agreed, grinning. “I don’t doubt it. But it is helpful to have more than just military weaponry in one’s arsenal.” He saw the syllable catch Eggsy’s attention, a reflexive leer building across his face. “Moving on,” Harry said swiftly. “What next?”

Eggsy allowed himself to be diverted, still grinning. “What’s this one?” Eggsy asked, brandishing a grand dark bottle of _Chateau Lafite Rothschild_. 

“Ah, very good,” Harry said. “The 1954. Only around five hundred bottles left, and we’re in the right decade to drink it. Shall we?”

Eggsy looked between Harry and the bottle a couple of times, and then asked, sounding genuinely doubtful, “Uh, why would you waste it on me?”

Harry paused until the fierce urge to lean in, kiss him, claim him, lift him up - had subsided. “Eggsy,” he said instead, looking him earnestly in the eye, allowing himself that much, “do you have any idea how much of a twit you sound?”

Eggsy gave him an amused scowl. “Fuck off.”

“Nothing is wasted if it is fully experienced.”

“ _You’re_ wasting it all by spitting it out.”

“You’re _supposed_ to spit it out.”

“Spit not swallow, eh Harry?”

The mood changed like the flip of a coin, and abruptly Harry was hot under his collar. And—fuck it. This was the most enjoyable evening he’d had in months. He took a cooling sip of water, swallowed, and then, knowing his lips were wet, letting them be, said with a glimmer of mischief, “The only thing a gentleman should spit is wine.”

Delight flared in Eggsy’s eyes. He gave Harry a wolfish grin, then swirled his glass like a first-class sommelier. “It’s just,” he said, his accent dripping pearls, “you know, it’s really good in my mouth,” and then sipped with feigned pleasure, and pointedly swallowed, all whilst keeping Harry’s gaze. “Goes down so nicely.” 

He finished by wiping a red drop of wine from the corner of his lip with one knuckle, and licking it slowly clean. 

If Harry had been less well-bred, that little display would have left him panting. “Careful,” he said, retaining a hold on his shredded control, just. He gestured to the bottles on the table, to give his next remarks at least a threadbare veneer of propriety. “If you carry on like this, you’ll get fucked.” 

Eggsy didn’t miss a beat. “I like getting fucked.”

“You might regret it in the morning,” Harry said, and oh, yes, he was talking about the after-affects of alcohol, absolutely. 

“I don’t reckon I would.”

For a long strung-out moment Harry contemplated - everything. Eggsy wanted it, _he_ wanted it - why not? Why not. But—no. 

Protocol had to be followed. Fraternisation between knights and candidates was actively discouraged, if not explicitly outlawed, and for good reason. Compromising Eggsy’s chances at distinguishing himself for a brief tryst - or even a not so brief one - would be unacceptable at this stage in proceedings. 

Harry leaned forwards and deliberately moved the wine bottle away. “Well I can’t let that happen,” he said. 

Eggsy gave him a very obvious, very disappointed look. 

“While you’re a candidate,” Harry said, choosing his words. “I’m responsible. Don’t worry - when you’re a Kingsman, you can make your own choices.”

“Oh really?”

“Mm,” Harry said, and Eggsy gave him one of those breathtaking sun-coming-out grins and lifted his glass in a faux salute.

“Now _that_ is motivational.“


	2. Chapter 2

The first time Harry woke up in hospital, IV line plugged into the back of his hand and chest sticky with gum from serial ECGs, it wasn’t a surprise. He remembered Professor Arnold, the goons, the explosion—delivering himself unto Exhibition Road on a plume of flame and antique academic brick dust. 

He grimaced; his mouth tasted appalling and his jaw itched. His investigative fingers made it about two months of growth. Fuck.

A nurse helped him with the initial indignities of tube removal, then unhooked his IV line and helped him pick his halting way to the bathroom. He managed a brief shower and a cursory brush of his teeth before his legs threatened to give way, at which point she helped him back to bed and brought him possibly the best cup of tea he’d ever tasted.

Eggsy, when allowed in a forty-five minutes later, did not look at Harry as if he was the most unkempt he’d been in years. He looked _hungry_. 

“He’s doing well,” Merlin had said, over the phone, quarter of an hour earlier. “Down to the final six - there’s everything to play for.”

There certainly was. In the flesh, Eggsy looked fitter, jumpsuit hanging sleekly off the breadth of his shoulders, the stiff fabric softened through use. Harry’s hands itched to touch it. 

“You look well,” Harry said, taking the shameless opportunity to look him quickly up and down. 

“You look like shit,” Eggsy said, grinning widely, bouncing on the balls of his feet like some sort of overgrown puppy. At his feet, his actual puppy seemed significantly calmer. “‘Fink a trip to the barber’s may be in order.”

“Do you think?” Harry said dryly, and then Eggsy was by the bed, staring down at him with an expression that made Harry’s blood run a little hotter. 

“You could have fucking died,” Eggsy said, as if telling Harry a secret.

“Yes, well,” Harry said. He realised he was playing with the cannula piercing the back of his hand - it was starting to tissue, the skin flaring pink and tender under its dressing. He made himself look Eggsy in the eye. “It rather comes with the territory.”

“Nuh uh,” Eggsy said, shaking his head. “You don’t get to skip out early, no fucking way. You started this,” and good grief, he was gesturing to _himself_ , it made Harry’s mouth go dry, “you gotta stick around to finish up.”

“It looks like you have it under control,” Harry said, and Eggsy’s eyes grew blacker; for one lurching moment it seemed like he might very well crawl onto the bed and try to kiss the living daylights out of him. 

“Looking the part is half the battle,” Eggsy said, his voice rougher than normal.

Harry found he had to swallow. “Quite. Speaking of which,” he said, as mild and bright as he could, “I do rather need to avail myself of a razor and some hot water.”

Just like that, Eggsy was all casual impudence again. “You’re not wrong,” he said. “I brought the kit, actually. I’ll do it for you.”

Out of the frying pan… “Really not necessary,” Harry said, shaking his head.

Eggsy shot him an amused look. “Mate, your hands are shaking. You’re about as safe with a blade as a kitten on speed.”

“The nurse can do it,” Harry said, trying not to smile, and Eggsy made a disparaging noise. 

“Do you know - that actually ain’t what they’re paid for?” The tease in his voice was extremely warming. “C’mon, it is physically paining me to see you this scruff.”

“It is physically _hurting_ me to hear you mangle the English language like that,” Harry said, but he didn’t make any further objections when Eggsy darted off into the en suite - thank you, Kingsman private medical facilities - and started running the hot water. Harry had just come out of an eight week coma. He could allow himself a treat. 

He walked carefully over to the bathroom, feeling unused muscles protest the demands of gravity, and then gave a disbelieving laugh to see Eggsy unpacking a Babyliss For Men box from a bag on the floor. “Well you’ve come prepared.”

“Knew you’d wake up,” Eggsy said. 

There was a tight stubbornness to the words that Harry chose not to mention. “What manner of contraption is that?”

Eggsy wielded - there was no other word for how he was holding it - a shiny black beard trimmer with a faintly victorious look.

Harry allowed himself to be pulled to the wide hospital sink and angled over it, Eggsy sliding in close next to him. Steam rose from the hot water pouring endlessly into the sink and swirling straight down the drain. The air filled with buzzing and then the dark drift of hair, peppering the white basin and then washing away as Eggsy ran the device over Harry’s cheeks, jaw, throat. 

Harry tried not to catch his own eye in the mirror as he let Eggsy move his face this way and that. Probably any human contact would feel like this. Having another’s hands cupping his face, angling his jaw—of course it would feel good and necessary in a borderline primal way—he’d been unconscious for weeks, what else should he expect?

“Done,” Eggsy declared. 

Harry looked up to assess his reflection. “You are joking.”

Eggsy had stripped off the majority of growth, leaving Harry with a dark approximation of a five o’clock shadow. 

“Suits you. The designer stubble look, innit,” Eggsy said, with a vaguely predatory look at Harry’s mouth through the mirror. “Very…” He rubbed a thumb along the length of Harry’s jaw, against the grain, because apparently eight weeks of training had done wonders for his sense of entitlement. “…fit.”

Harry ignored the tingling in the skin Eggsy had just touched. “Where’s the razor?” he asked, looking around. “I’ll do it myself.”

And that, apparently, was not on. “No,” Eggsy said, and pushed him gently but firmly to one side, perching Harry on the edge of the bath and arranging a towel around his neck. The plug went in the sink, and the basin slowly filled, the air growing thicker with steam. A couple of drops of oil went into the water. Eggsy soaked a flannel and wrung it out, then pressed it to Harry’s face and held it there. The heat was blissful, fragrant - another primal creature comfort - and Harry exhaled a soft groan of pleasure before he could stop himself. 

“Nice?” Eggsy murmured.

Harry nodded, his eyes closed.

Eggsy made a pleased noise in his throat that went straight to Harry’s groin, and replaced the flannel with a fresh hot one. “Thought you’d like it.”

“Very astute.” God, he hadn’t known how much he needed this. He was seeing stars behind his eyelids, drifting in pleasant darkness anchored by Eggsy’s hands—and then Eggsy took the cloth away and Harry had to grip the edge of the bath hard, almost reeling, blinking in sudden brightness.

Eggsy was smirking at him. “Told you,” he said, getting out a shaving kit Harry recognised from an exclusive glass cabinet in the tailor’s shop. “Can’t trust you with a blade right now.”

“But we can trust _you_?”

“My weaponry scores are excellent,” Eggsy said, drawing a straight razor across its strop a few times, and it should have been unnerving but instead Harry found he had to wet his lips. 

“Where did you get the kit, anyway?”

“Borrowed it.” Butter wouldn’t melt. 

“Very nice,” Harry said, because it was; all curved handles of polished wood and gleaming brass inlay. And Eggsy seemed to know what he was doing - to a point. He used the brush to swirl up an impressive lather in the cup of his hand—then used his hand to smooth it over Harry’s jaw. Across his cheek, up to his ear, down to the base of his throat. Then the other side, Eggsy leaning in, all bitten lip and rapt attention. 

“You’re supposed to use the brush for that too,” Harry said, trying not to move his lips, and Eggsy gave him another innocent look. 

“Oops.”

The brush came up then, buffing up the lather over Harry’s cheeks, and then Eggsy rinsed his hands and reached for the razor, and Harry found himself sitting up very straight. 

“Probably easier if I…” Eggsy said, and pushed Harry’s knees apart, insinuating himself in between. 

“Mm,” Harry said, looking up at him. Their proximity was… distracting. He had a sudden, vivid image of himself leaning forwards, kissing the flat of Eggsy’s stomach, tasting the skin at the angle of his hip; feeling the smooth warm lines of muscle clenching beneath his tongue. Not a wise move, under the circumstances. 

Eggsy rinsed and wrung out the flannel again, then held it under Harry’s chin and angled his face to one side. Harry shivered at the first touch of metal, caught between the pleasure of contact and the frisson of unease that a blade just out of his line of sight would always elicit. Eggsy’s movements were confident, though, his concentration absolute as he started to shave him: slow strokes at first, against the grain, curving around Harry’s cheekbones and gliding against the edge of his jaw, then a series of quick deft passes, tidying up, all the small sensitive places, the delicate slopes of lips and chin. 

Harry closed his eyes, luxuriating in the clean sharpness running over his skin; the rough heat of the flannel; the guidance of Eggsy’s fingers, steady and assertive. He was bloody good, Harry found himself thinking. Someone had trained him well. 

He ignored the slight pang that went through him, then—that he hadn’t been the one doing the training. 

“There you go,” Eggsy said, under his breath. “Just let me…”

Harry let Eggsy tilt his head back, baring his throat, then sucked in a couple of deep breaths when Eggsy skated the razor right down to his collarbone without slowing down. There was no telltale sting of a cut, though, no sizzle of pain; Eggsy’s weapon scores were indeed excellent. He repeated the swift stroke down the other side of Harry’s neck, then took the central line of his Adam’s apple more slowly, dabbing with the hot cloth as he went. Harry found he was coming out in goose-pimples, as if the rest of the hair on his body was tingling in sympathy, and by the time Eggsy had reapplied the shaving foam and moved on to the second pass - a closer shave, with the grain now, and only a fraction slower - Harry had the edge of the bath in a white-knuckled grip, molten shivers coursing all over. 

It wasn’t the first time he’d let another man shave him, but it was the first time he hadn’t been naked throughout proceedings. There again, he was only wearing hospital-issue pyjamas now. And beneath them, nothing. 

He let his knees rest on the outside of Eggsy’s legs, feeling the heat of him coming easily through the thin fabric. 

Eggsy paused at that, long enough that Harry opened his eyes. Eggsy’s gaze was like a sunbeam on his face, dazzling and warming him in equal parts. He looked _painfully_ turned on. God only knew what he’d been thinking about, having Harry sitting obediently in front of him like this. Harry realised his own mouth was slightly open, lips parted; he supposed he may have made a few noises. 

For a moment, it seemed impossible that Eggsy wouldn’t lean down and kiss him. The promise of it hung in the air between them like the dizzying steam, as Eggsy’s fingertips slid back up Harry’s throat and curled against his jaw. But—no, no, apparently he was just swiping off an errant smear of shaving foam, nothing more, and the next moment Eggsy was rinsing the flannel again and returning to dab at Harry’s cheek.

Harry swallowed and turned his face into it. He was being weak, he knew, but the pressure of Eggsy’s hand felt so damn good. He was fairly confident that Eggsy was hard; in his peripheral vision, Eggsy shifted his weight as he ran the hot cloth slowly over Harry’s face and neck, and Harry repressed the urge to reach out in reply and run both hands up the front of Eggsy’s thighs. 

He closed his eyes and let himself imagine it, for one sublime second, Eggsy unzipping the jumpsuit and dropping it to the floor, stepping out of it, bare-arsed and eager. Harry would slide his hands up the backs of his legs, coax him closer, let him rub the jut of his cock against Harry’s freshly shaven cheek. He’d nuzzle and lick until Eggsy was gasping, and then he’d duck his head and suck him into his mouth while his hands went to investigate that lovely arse in earnest. It would be so easy. He could have it _right now_. 

His hands had lifted of their own accord. 

And— _no_. Harry swallowed and curled his fingers back around the cool edge of the bath, reiterating to himself why that would be a bad idea. Eggsy was down to the final six, which meant three more challenges: the pseudo-sabotaged skydive, the train tracks, then the obedience test with the dog. If he was focused, none of those should pose any difficulty at all. And as Lancelot, he could do whatever he liked. They could do whatever _they_ liked. The wait would be worth it.

He made himself open his eyes again. “Thank you,” he said. 

Eggsy blinked down at him, then at the damp cloth in his hands, as if he hadn’t realised the task was - to all intents and purposes - finished. “It’s alright,” he said.

“No, I… appreciate it,” Harry said, and swept his fingertips over his face, genuinely impressed with the quality of the shave. “Very good job.”

An agonised flash went across Eggsy’s face. “Thanks,” he said, and then, shoving the cloth in the sink and stuffing his hands in his pockets, “er, I just—I gotta—go.” 

He turned on his heel and left, leaving Harry alone in the steamy bathroom. Harry’s brain filled with the memories of their first meeting, the thorough and uninhibited hand-fucking Eggsy had given himself afterwards. He wondered where Eggsy would find to do it in a private hospital; an empty patient’s room, perhaps? Another bathroom? A sluice? All that was certain was that Eggsy _would_ do it, because controlling the baser instincts was clearly for other people. 

Harry found his aftershave, patted it on, then looked up sharply as a rap came on the main door. Eggsy had reconsidered? 

“Come in,” he called, preparing for a second onslaught. 

It was Merlin, a darkly amused look behind his glasses. “Harry. Good to see you up and about. Tell me,” he said, conversationally, “did I just pass your candidate sporting a massive hard-on on the way out of your hospital room?”

It surprised a laugh out of him, quickly suppressed; he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Oh dear,” he said. That was the cat well and truly launched from the bag, then. He cleared his throat, mustered a wry smile. “On balance it looks as if you may have been right about his… infatuation.”

“No shit,” Merlin said. “Are you going to do anything about it?”

If Eggsy’s gaze was like a sunbeam, Merlin’s was more comparable with the laser sights on an automatic machine gun. 

Harry made his voice as even as possible. “Well that would be completely inappropriate as well as rather counter-productive, wouldn’t it?”

Merlin didn’t look away. “Correct.”

Apparently he was going to make Harry say it. “Therefore I won’t allow it,” he said. “Don’t worry, I have a lot more self-control than he does.”

“A seventeen year old crack addict has more self-control than he does.”

“That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?”

Merlin touched his glasses, then gave Harry a sardonic look. “He is wanking off in a supplies cupboard less than ten feet down the corridor.”

_Thinking outside the box_. “Ah. Well, fair point, then,” Harry said, hoping that his memory of what Eggsy _looked_ like when he was masturbating furiously did not show on his face. “Shall we turn our attention to other matters, or did you want to enjoy the show?”

“Other matters, hands down,” Merlin said fervently.

***

Harry was on the plane to Istanbul when Eggsy messaged him a picture of himself in his flight suit, helmet clamped under one arm, all cocky grin and ruffled hair. Of course: the skydive. It was captioned: _About to join the mile high club_.

Harry smirked. _I’m not sure that means what you think it means. Unless you’re about to get very friendly with Ollie perhaps?_

_Not my type_ , came the immediate reply.

Harry replied: _You amaze me._

A moment later, his phone buzzed again. _What’s it mean then? Mile high club._

There was no way he couldn’t know. He was being baited. Nevertheless: _The gaining of carnal knowledge of an associate in an airborne craft._

_Fucking on a plane_

_Indeed._

_Where are you?_

Harry’s smirk broadened. _On a plane._

_Any associates there?_

_No - flying solo today._

_You can join the club on your own then._

_Please - I’ve been a member for years._

_I bet you have._

Harry stared at the screen for a long moment, marveling yet again at how modern modes of communication facilitated this sort of… escalation. He shifted in his seat. He glanced around the empty plane. Apart from the pilot, Stephanie, safely hidden away in the cockpit, there wasn’t another soul for twenty thousand feet. There were no cameras back here, and his glasses were stowed in their case. It certainly wasn’t… public. His fingers wanted to reply with details, encounters, paint Eggsy a filthy picture to keep him warm during his flight. He contented himself with: _I’m frankly surprised you haven’t._

_Turns out EasyJet ain’t that easy._

_Fair point_ , Harry replied, and then there was a long pause, and he realised he’d shut down the exchange by mistake. And that would not do. He sent a second message: _How long until you jump?_

_30 min til lift-off_

Not even on the plane yet then. Harry flicked off the comms channel to the pilot and sat back against the cushioned seat, letting his knees slide slowly apart. No harm in a little… conversation. _Nervous?_

_No!_

_Excited?_

_YES_

Harry’s eyes half closed and he shifted his free hand onto his thigh. _Reconsidering a mid-air tryst with Ollie?_

_Told you HE’S not my type,_ Eggsy replied, and there it was: practically an invitation to ask. 

Harry bit his lip, picturing Eggsy off to one side of the group, texting in furtive bursts, hanging on Harry’s every reply. He tapped out, _And what is your type, Eggsy?_ and then deleted it again. Not smart. Instead he wrote, _Roxy?_

_Fit but not who I’m thinking of rn,_ Eggsy replied, and Harry’s eyes narrowed. 

_Where are you?_

_Gents_ , came the rapid one-word reply, and the image changed in Harry’s head: Eggsy wasn’t with the others any more. He wasn’t waiting by the plane; he’d taken himself away. Something about their exchange had made him retreat to a place of privacy, and now he was in the opulent Kingsman bathroom, in his flight suit, probably leaning against the closed door. Probably, given his track record, touching himself through the thick black fabric, maybe undoing the fly and sliding his hand inside. Maybe panting.

_Nervous after all?_ Harry texted, and then before Eggsy had a chance to answer, added: _Because if you were, I could ring you, give you a few pointers._

There was a pause. Harry realised he was clenching his teeth. He consciously relaxed, let his hand slide a little further up his thigh. Eggsy might not want it; Harry might be on the wrong track entirely. This could all be innocent banter about planes.

Then: _Go on then_

Harry drew in an unsteady breath, wet his lips, and made the call. 

“Hello, Eggsy.”

“ _Harry_ ,” Eggsy said, and it was all there in his voice, unmistakable: the rough breathy intensity that Harry had now heard so fucking frequently it was essentially hardwired to his cock. 

Harry squeezed himself through his trousers, keeping his own voice light. “It’s quite natural to feel like this,” he said. “Nervous. Before your first time. At altitude.”

“Yeah?” An attempt was clearly being made on Eggsy’s part to disguise his voice. A futile attempt. 

Harry gripped himself tighter. “Everyone experiences a sense of… trepidation, from time to time.” Common sense was warring with the fierce fizzing sensation that swamped his brain at the thought of Eggsy wanking himself off to the sound of Harry’s voice. “Especially trying something new. Something _dangerous_ ,” he said, and unzipped.

“Uh huh,” Eggsy said, and Harry could picture his lip caught between his teeth, his forehead drawn in faint lines, his hand flashing over his cock, his breath ineptly held.

“The important thing is to remember why you’re doing it,” Harry said, and if his voice dropped a little, well, he couldn’t be fucked to care about that right now. His cock felt fucking incredible in his hand, silky smooth and swollen hard, pulsing hot in his grip. “Do you know why?”

“Yeah,” Eggsy said. 

“Tell me.”

“Wanna—win,” Eggsy said, effort in his voice. “Wanna be a Kingsman. Wanna—impress you.”

“You already do.” 

Eggsy’s voice was mostly breath. “Yeah?”

“Very much so,” Harry said, gripping the phone tightly, and then he licked his other palm and rubbed it over the head of his cock, making himself twitch. The soft sounds Eggsy was making were driving him insane. “Do you know why _I_ want you to do it?”

“No,” Eggsy said, between two ill-concealed sharp breaths. 

“Do you want me to tell you?” 

“Yeah. Go on,” Eggsy said, and the heat in his voice was making Harry dizzy. 

“I want you to be a Kingsman as well.”

“Yeah.” 

“I’m looking forwards to watching you… graduate,” Harry said tightly, finding a rhythm that worked, long sweet strokes finishing in a slick, nasty twist around the head of his cock, over and over. 

“ _Yeah_.”

“I’m looking forwards to—working with you,” Harry said, hearing his voice roughen as he struggled to keep his breathing steady. “You’re going to make an _excellent_ knight.”

“Uh huh,” Eggsy said faintly, and Harry could definitely hear the rhythmic rustle of fabric in the background now. 

“So you see,” Harry said, stroking himself harder, faster, letting the dark liquid pleasure of it well up inside him, “if you back out now, you’re going to miss out on so much.”

“Yeah—”

“I really want you to win, Eggsy.”

“ _Yeah_ —”

“Is that what you want too?”

“ _Yeah_ , God, Harry, I’m—I’m gonna—”

Harry strained to hear every damn second of it. “Yes?”

“ _Jump_ ,” Eggsy said, in a low shuddery rush. Harry tipped his head back against the cushions, shoving against his hand and picturing it, Eggsy shooting his load, trying to come silently with his teeth gritted and his fist around his cock. “Oh _god_ ,” Eggsy muttered, “yeah, I—I am, I’m gonna jump, thanks, the… parachute,” and his voice was blurry now, almost mumbling, “thanks, Harry, good talk, um… yeah.”

It was a commendable effort. “Good,” Harry managed, drawing on his deepest reserves of willpower. “I’m glad we see eye-to-eye. I’m going to… leave you to it,” he finished crisply, control buckling all at once, and he ended the call and dropped the phone on the floor and took his cock in both hands, stroking hard. The _sounds_ Eggsy had been making, all that shivery exertion, it made Harry want to crush him against a wall and shove his tongue in his mouth. He wanted to grab fistfuls of Eggsy’s hair and hear him cry out, beg, whine. He wanted to fuck him _so much_ , wanted Eggsy riding his cock while making those noises, his arse tight and yielding around Harry’s dick, letting Harry fuck up into him and elicit a whole string of those pretty, helpless gasps. 

He spread his knees wider, shoving one hand down to squeeze his balls while the other stroked his cock _just right_ , and the edges of his vision started filling with starbursts. And if Eggsy had just been here, kneeling between his legs, mouth open to receive the tip of Harry’s cock, god, that would be it, he would be coming in Eggsy’s grateful mouth, watching it splash across his wet lips and stripe his tongue; coming right fucking _now_.

Harry turned his head to the side, orgasm storming towards him, and then the plane gave a sudden jolt of turbulence and a warning siren started to blare. 

_What the—_

“Emergency protocol five-six-five initiated,” an automated voice chimed, as Harry fumbled his fly closed as fast as he could and dragged himself to his feet. Black spots flashed across his vision.

“Comms - open channel,” he snarled, as the world pitched and swum around him, adrenaline picking up where arousal had left off. “Stephanie, what the fuck is happening?”

The pilot’s voice rang out cheerfully. “Little bit of anti-aircraft fire,” she said, and the warning siren ceased. “And a minor hydraulics failure which I’ve patched now - nothing to worry about.”

Harry scrubbed a hand over his face, feeling like his heart was racing in his throat. “I see,” he said. “ _Whose_ anti-aircraft fire, exactly?” 

“Best guess is the PKK,” Stephanie said. “But you never know - they’re not the only Kurdish insurgents in these parts. Anyway, it’s sorted, and I’ve taken us up a notch so we should be in the clear zone now.”

“Right,” Harry said, pacing up and down, tapping his hand against his thigh, getting his breathing back to a normal pattern. “Good.”

“We’ll begin our descent just the other side of Diyarbakir,” Stephanie said, then laughed. “Unless I see any more troublemakers - I’ll keep you posted! But that should be it for now. Sorry for any alarm caused - I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing.”

There was nothing in her voice to suggest she had any suspicion of what Harry had been doing, but he still had a sudden wild urge to laugh. “Right,” he said. “Thanks.”

He stooped to pick his phone off the floor, eyes falling on the string of text messages from Eggsy. He reread it quickly - nothing too incriminating, but still enough to make Merlin raise his eyebrows, he’d bet. He hit _delete all_ and felt slightly more collected. 

No harm done, aside from the minor issue of a near heart attack in a very compromising position. And—the fact he had sort of given Eggsy an aural reach-around, even if neither of them had acknowledged it. Which… Fuck. A tad too far. Definitely blurring the lines he’d drawn up for them. What on earth had he been thinking? 

He closed his eyes for a moment. He knew exactly what he’d been thinking. He’d let Eggsy get under his skin, let his casual horny impudence play havoc with Harry’s own internal logic. He needed to press the reset button, push him back to arm’s reach. So… that’s what he would do. 

_Yes_ , he thought, giving himself a firm nod.

Absolutely.

***

“How did he do?” Harry asked Merlin, via his glasses, during the flight back from Istanbul.

“Very well,” Merlin said. “Ballsy. Relaxed, even. Held out til three hundred feet, then piggy-backed with Roxy to the ground without even touching his own pack - not bad at all.”

“Good,” Harry said, turning his phone over in his hand, where a new message from Eggsy said simply, _Nailed it_. “So who’s left?”

“Roxy, Charlie and your man, there,” Merlin said. “All very capable. But I’ve got to say, if Eggsy can face tonight’s task with anything like the equilibrium he showed earlier today, he’s in with a very good chance.”

Harry pressed his lips together. But of _course_ , while he’d been worrying he’d gone too far, Eggsy had been swanning around in a state of post-coital tranquility. “Well,” he said, “here’s hoping.”

***

He’d planned to avoid Eggsy until after the NLP challenge, but no sooner had Harry stepped off the plane than he heard a furious volley of yapping.

He turned to see the pug puppy racing towards him, and behind it, jogging smoothly in the setting sunlight, Eggsy himself. 

Harry stole a moment to appreciate how fucking gorgeous he looked in the deep golden light, before shutting that train of thought right down. 

“Eggsy,” he said, lifting one hand in greeting. 

Eggsy ran right up to him before stopping. “ _Harry_ ,” he replied, and for a moment Harry was right back in that fucking phone-call. 

He cleared his throat. “Ah - well done, today. I hear congratulations are in order. Three hundred feet.”

“Yeah,” Eggsy said, grinning. “That was, uh… yeah.” He tilted his head, sucked his bottom lip for a moment. “Couldn’t ‘ave done it without the pep talk though,” he said, watching Harry closely as he spoke.

“Glad it helped,” Harry said, as bland as he could manage, and bit the inside of his cheek. Eggsy was trying to gauge if Harry had _noticed_? What sort of oblivious imbecile did he think he was? 

On the other hand, maybe that was for the best. 

“Yeah, it really helped me get over my, uh, nerves,” Eggsy said, smile going sly. 

Harry patted his shoulder. “Excellent,” he said, nodding for good measure, then dropped his hand. “Any time.”

Eggsy gave him a doubtful look. “ _Really_?” 

“Of course. That’s what I’m here for.” Harry smiled as he watched Eggsy register that they _really. Weren’t. Discussing. This_ —and then added for good measure: “Moral support.” 

Eggsy’s eyebrows inched up at that, and then he cleared his throat loudly. “Right,” he said, clearly biting back a grin. “Yeah, well, thanks for that, Harry. Appreciate it.”

“As I said,” Harry said, and gave Eggsy his most innocuous smile. “Any time.”


	3. Chapter 3

It turned out that demonstrations of absolute, unshakeable loyalty really turned Harry on. He only hoped his face was unreadable as he stared down at Eggsy, tied to the train tracks, the trick platform slowly raising him back to ground level. Eggsy’s breathing was still up, pupils dilated; fight or flight in full physiological swing. 

“Congratulations,” Harry said, watching Eggsy’s face register that they were both alive, well and here. “Bloody well done.”

Eggsy stared up at him, as if he wasn’t trusting that Harry was actually real. “How’d the others do?”

“Roxy passed with flying colours. Charlie’s up next,” Harry said, conscious of Merlin’s silent presence behind the one-way glass. “Want to watch?”

“Yeah, alright,” Eggsy said, twitching the ropes and then, as Harry advanced on him with the serrated knife, going still. 

Harry maintained eye contact as he knelt slowly down between the tracks, cut the ropes at Eggsy’s ankles in two quick jerks, then turned his attention to his wrists. The rope was a smooth high-tensile polymer blend but Eggsy had still managed to graze himself, struggling. All that physical terror and still achingly loyal.

Harry wet his lips. “You did well,” he said quietly, sliding his thumb under the rope against the pink skin of Eggsy’s wrist, feeling the rapid-fire bounding of Eggsy’s pulse as he pulled the rope to maximum tension.

“Thanks.” Eggsy’s gaze was heavy again, and then his breath caught as Harry inserted his blade into the space between the rope and his skin. 

Harry smirked. “Don’t you trust me?” 

He’d aimed to sound more teasing than anything, and then Eggsy stared up at him, so fucking open, and said, “ _Yes_.”

Harry swallowed, mouth abruptly dry. “Good,” he said, and cut him free.

***

“Be back by ten PM tomorrow,” Merlin said, with a mild glance at Harry that telegraphed loud and clear that he remembered their earlier conversations and would personally have him castrated if he fucked this up. “I’d recommend you spend your twenty-four hours constructively or Roxy will wipe the floor with him.” _No fucking_ , came the subtext. _Not if you want him to win._

Harry very much wanted Eggsy to win. And there really wasn’t much more to do. Just the final test: the measurement of a candidate’s weakness to sentiment, commitment to protocol, ability to follow a command regardless of its nature. Provided Eggsy could remain preoccupation-free a little longer, there was no reason they shouldn’t be home and dry. 

Eggsy cracked open a can of Coke. “Alright,” he said, taking a long slurp and raising his eyebrows at Harry’s look of distaste. “What’s on the menu, then?”

“Some basic training. Hand-to-hand. A gadget or two,” Harry said, and then, largely for Merlin’s benefit, added, “And then we can see about popping your cherry.”

Merlin made an injured sound. 

Eggsy just laughed. “Mate, I ain’t got no cherries left to pop.”

 _I dare say_. “Your sartorial cherry,” Harry said, as if unmoved. “I’m fairly confident that, in this one respect at least, you are _virgo intacta_.”

“Taurus, actually,” Eggsy said, taking another swig from his can and then looking outraged when Harry took it off him. “Oi! I was drinking that.” 

“Give me strength,” Merlin muttered, as Harry’s gaze snagged on Eggsy’s shiny wet mouth. 

_And me_ , Harry thought, clapping his hands. “Right! Bullet train to London, then. Shall we?”

***

“Improvised weaponry like table cutlery rarely has much cutting power, but you can still do a lot of damage with it,” Harry said, enjoying Eggsy’s rapt expression.

They were stood before Harry’s dining table, laid out for a six-person afternoon tea.

“If you can’t get an artery,” Harry continued, “go for a tendon insertion.” He tapped the iPad screen where Netter’s Anatomy Flash Cards (3rd Edition) was displaying an anatomical cartoon of an upper limb studded with red flags. “The antecubital fossa is a rich source of both.” 

Eggsy practised some swings with a butter knife; he had the aim of a black-belt but the poise of a thug. He left himself open to counter-attack - a lot. This was someone who had always been the fastest in a fight, the most surprising. Get in close then make a quick getaway. 

Harry stopped him mid-swing with a sharp underarm strike to the opposite ribs and then whirled closer, immobilising Eggsy’s arm between Harry’s chest and elbow, digging the slender tines of a cake fork precisely along the swollen white-blue flutter of Eggsy’s brachial artery. 

“You see,” he said, as Eggsy’s gaze flickered between his trapped arm, Harry’s hand, Harry’s collar, Harry’s face, “it’s readily accessible, and causes a sensory cascade that is quite threatening.”

“Right,” Eggsy said, and if Harry had asked him to repeat what he’d just said, he suspected Eggsy would have no idea. 

Harry opened his mouth to say more, and then a sharp crack across the back of his knees brought them both crashing to the floor in a tumble of long limbs. Eggsy, having orchestrated the strike, came down on top and dropped straight into a wrestling hold, dominant arm forced across Harry’s throat. 

“Oh very good,” Harry said, trying not to focus on the warmth burgeoning everywhere they were pressed together - a lean slice of thigh, stomach, chest - and vigorously ignoring his brain’s rapid calculations telling him exactly how much force he would have to use to break the hold and flip Eggsy onto his back. Roll on top. Pin him. Until he begged. _And then…_ Harry pressed his lips together, conscious that much more of that type of thought would be decidedly arousing, and in this position that would create further… complications. 

“You forget I still have this, though,” he said instead, bringing his free arm around and gently spiking the fork into the back of Eggsy’s neck. He felt Eggsy shiver on top of him, cold blunt-sharp tines against sensitive skin. “Once again, your brain should be telling you that any sudden move may result in C-spine injury.”

“Fuck off,” Eggsy said, laughing without moving away. 

Harry dug the fork in a little harder. “No?” 

Eggsy shivered again, and the strength in the arm across Harry’s throat faltered for a moment. Harry’s instincts flared; in the time between one heartbeat and the next, he dropped the fork and rolled them over, pinning Eggsy to the floor in three places and pushing a knee between his legs. Sensory messages flooded his brain: the parting of Eggsy’s thighs around his knee, the hint of a bulge around the place a bulge should be if Eggsy was getting hard; the unabashed interest in Eggsy’s eyes as Harry drew back to look at his face. 

“You see, your concentration must be unbroken or in a moment you can lose your advantage,” he said, keeping his voice steady with difficulty. His own cock was definitely stirring. He pressed a little harder to make his point, then released Eggsy all at once and got swiftly to his feet again. “Right. That’s probably enough for now. Let’s go upstairs - there’s something in my office I’d like to show you.”

Eggsy, still sprawled on the floor, pushed up on his elbows. “Is it _etchings_?” he drawled, startling a laugh out of Harry. 

“No, Eggsy,” he said, making his voice firm. “In fact,” he added, because this was as good a moment as any, “there are no etchings in this entire house.”

Eggsy bit his lip, grinning. “Shame.”

 _Shameless_. “Anyway,” Harry said, and gestured to the door. “If you would like to follow me.”

***

“That is rank,” Eggsy pronounced, and downed it in one.

“Perhaps a touch too much vermouth,” Harry said generously. He watched as Eggsy fussed with the bottles again, pouring out another generous measure of gin. His fingers on the knife as he carved off a thin curling slice of lemon rind—Harry wanted to lick the juice off them. 

“A word of caution,” Harry said, half addressing himself. Cocktails and it wasn’t even dusk - what had he been thinking? “They’re strong. There is, in fact, a pertinent rhyme which may be useful for you to remember.” He indulged himself with a oratory stance, enjoying how Eggsy’s gaze flowed over him. “ _I like to have a martini. Two at the very most. Three I’ll be under the table. Four I’ll be under the host._ ”

“Dorothy Parker,” Eggsy said, and Harry’s eyebrows raised in delight. 

“Very good. Actually misattributed. But - very good, Eggsy. I do like these little surprises of yours.”

Eggsy rested the rim of his glass against his lower lip, and flashed Harry a smile. “So, uh… about that forth martini…”

It took a moment’s fantastic strength of will not to dash Eggsy’s glass to the floor and seize his mouth in a deep, dirty kiss. “Perhaps another time,” Harry said, and he could hear that his words and tone did not match but there was nothing he could do about it right now. 

“Sure,” Eggsy said, his expression easy but his eyes glinting in a way that put a considerable dent in Harry’s resolve.

***

“And what about, like, seduction and shit,” Eggsy said, two martinis later. “Is there a lesson on that in spy school?”

The way he was sprawled out in Harry’s favourite armchair, glass held idly in lax fingers, could only be described as _louche_. 

Harry shook his head. “Very rarely necessary. Certainly doesn’t need training.” He read the disappointment in Eggsy’s face, and took on a mollifying tone. “I’m sure if it came to it you could fall back on your natural charm.”

“You’re telling me, like, you _never_ seduced a mark,” Eggsy said, and images spun back to Harry from the last ten years: mostly men, mostly not quite his type but enjoyable all the same. 

Harry tilted his head. “Only as a last resort,” he said, allowing the faintest warmth of memory come to his face. 

Eggsy gave a hiss of triumph and punched the air, causing the dregs of his drink to slosh up the angled sides of his glass. “Yes, Harry!”

Harry huffed a laugh and looked briefly away. Incorrigible. 

“Go on then,” Eggsy said, eyes bright, “tell me.”

“Absolutely not,” Harry said, with a smile.

***

He could have predicted that it would be difficult to put Eggsy to bed that night. There was a rakish energy to him that would not ebb: three-and-a-half martinis had done nothing to slow him down; he ploughed through the five-course multi-national meal Harry had designed purely to teach the various essential table manners that every Kingsman needed to know, and not at all as an excuse to watch Eggsy struggle with chopsticks or lick plum sauce off his fingers, oh no; and when Harry opted for port rather than after-dinner coffee, Eggsy shrugged and said, “Yeah, I don’t exactly need the caffeine right now, do I? I’m well buzzing.”

Harry had restrained himself to two martinis, one glass of Tuscan Chianti with dinner, and sipped his port extremely slowly. Nevertheless, there was a glow in the base of his stomach and he was having to choose his words carefully. 

Not: _We should go to bed_ , but: “It’s probably time we got some sleep. Early start tomorrow.”

Eggsy - who had polished off the rest of Harry’s bottle of Chianti during the earlier part of the meal, followed by two glasses of Riesling during the cheese course - was helping himself to a second measure of port. He looked up, grinned. “Already? No, no, no. You ‘ave got the most ridiculous drinks trolley for a bloke who lives on his own, and it would be basically cruel not to take me all the way through it.”

“It would be basically homicide to do any such thing.”

Eggsy’s grin brightened. “Ah, c’mon. At least the highlights. You’re way too posh - don’t tell me there’s not some _real_ good stuff knocking about.”

“I’m afraid we’re both far too tipsy to appreciate the finer points of that sort of bottle,” Harry said, and then chastised himself for being too forthcoming when Eggsy’s gaze sharpened on him. 

“Wouldn’t know it to look at you,” Eggsy said, and he was either making a point of looking Harry up and down, or he was just incredibly unsubtle.

Harry straightened his posture, tried to sound stern. “Eggsy. Bed. Now.” 

He regretted it immediately. “Oh Harry,” Eggsy said huskily, and for a moment Harry couldn’t tell if he was joking, “I fucking love it when you boss me around. Do it some more.”

Definitely joking. “No wonder you force me to do it so often,” Harry said, as dry as he could, and made himself stand up. “Fine, well, it’s up to you. I’m going to bed. Make inroads on the liquor cabinet if you wish, the decanters are fair game, but please avoid opening anything with a cork as there are some rather special bottles I was hoping could wait for a more momentous occasion than this one.”

Eggsy looked up at him balefully. “Don’t be such an old man, Harry.” 

“Very mature.”

“Yeah, but,” Eggsy said, clambering to his own feet and sauntering closer, a devilish hint of a smile playing over his lips, “what about a couple more lessons first? Don’t wanna neglect my education, d’you?”

Harry shut down the part of his brain that wanted to teach Eggsy, oh, so many things right now. “Lessons can wait for the morning.”

Eggsy pointed at the window in triumph. “Stars won’t.”

Harry regarded him. “You want me to teach you some more constellations,” he said flatly. “Now. At midnight, in the few scant hours we have before your final challenge, _that’s_ what you want to spend your time doing.” 

Eggsy blinked up at him. “It’s _one_ of the things I want,” he said, and wet his lips with a pink flash of tongue. 

Which was how Harry found himself leading Eggsy out onto his small windswept square of a townhouse roof terrace, at midnight, eroding the hours he’d set aside for sleep in favour of yielding to his shameless drunk protégé for a little while longer. 

Eggsy wrapped his arms around himself, looking up. The sky was mostly clear above the hazy yellow-and-white lights of the London skyline, sliced through with a crisp breeze; a crescent moon hung above the red steeple of the Shard. 

“There’s an issue of light pollution,” Harry found himself saying, feeling a strange need to apologise. “There will be fewer stars visible than when you were on Dartmoor.”

“Still loads,” Eggsy said, turning slowly in front of him and grinning, then grabbed Harry’s left hand with his own left hand and pointed with it, pulling Harry in close next to him. “That’s the Plough, right?”

Manipulative little shit. But two could play at that game. Eggsy wanted unruffled? Harry was born unruffled. 

_Recent events notwithstanding_ , his treacherous brain reminded him; but he shut that thought down and said instead, “Correct,” refusing to react, definitely refusing to muscle in closer or smell Eggsy’s hair or squeeze his fingers, tight; and then, because the alcohol in his system was having _some_ effect, he recited: “ _Alkaid_ , _Mizar_ , _Alioth_ , _Megrez_ , _Phecda_ , _Merak_ , _Dubhe_.”

Eggsy shot him an incredulous look over his right shoulder, without letting go of Harry’s hand, and the twist in the movement pressed the pert curve of his arse against Harry’s thigh. “What the fuck?” Eggsy said, and it took Harry a moment. 

He recovered himself quickly. “The names of the stars that make up the Plough,” he said, straight-faced, as if he weren’t feeling the blood rush straight to his cock, making it plump up, needy. “In order.”

“Mate, you know too fucking much about stars,” Eggsy said, giggling, eyes shining before he looked forwards again. “Anyone ever tell you you should get out more?”

“You weren’t complaining when you called me up begging for help,” Harry murmured, and the giggling dried up at once. It was as if Eggsy became aware of his position for the first time: backed up into Harry’s personal space with their left arms stretched together, Harry’s fingers enclosing his own, no longer pointing at the sky. 

“Harry,” Eggsy said slowly, and his voice had dropped an octave. Harry felt him shifting, pressing back against him, dangerously close to where Harry was half-hard and growing steadily; Eggsy dropped his shoulder and tilted his chin, exposing a supple stretch of neck. Right there, for Harry’s mouth, if he just wanted to duck his head and—

“So that is Casseopeia,” Harry said, tugging Eggsy’s hand back up into position, extending the index finger for him and making it trace the pinprick W of stars. 

Eggsy jolted straight again, but his breathing had picked up. “Harry…”

“And that whole cluster is Ursula Minor,” Harry said, and if he overstretched Eggsy’s arm a little, just to feel the tension zinging up and down his body, the increased pressure against his thigh as Eggsy strove to balance, well, that was probably accidental, wasn’t it? 

“Uh huh,” Eggsy breathed, hot fingers flexing in Harry’s grasp. 

“And that,” Harry said, knocking one of Eggsy’s legs forwards and pivoting them around on the other, like a fucked up waltz step, Eggsy his shuddering unskilled partner, “is Orion. Do you see the belt? Do you remember which star I said represented due East?”

“No, uh…”

“You should pay more attention when I’m teaching you.”

“Sorry,” Eggsy said distantly, as if precisely none of his attention was on his voice right now.

“It’s Mintaka,” Harry said. 

“R-right,” Eggsy said, and his breathing was unmistakably heavy now, the sound of it a prickling hell all over Harry’s skin. Eggsy had stuffed his free hand in his pocket, and he seemed to be shivering endlessly - a tight bowstring lightly plucked. 

“Eggsy,” Harry said, letting his voice go as low as it wanted, and made him wait for it, three long seconds of taut silence, before asking considerately, “Are you quite all right?” He heard Eggsy’s sharp exhalation and continued, all insipid courtesy, “You know the effects of cold air on bare skin after alcohol can be quite powerful - heightening the intoxication, dropping the blood pressure, that sort of thing. Turn around and let me look at you.” 

He let go of Eggsy’s hand. Eggsy turned unsteadily, met Harry’s eye, blushed crimson in the darkness, and waved Harry away. “I’m fine,” he rasped, then yelped a soft laugh. “I’m—I’ve gotta go. Bed. Sorry. Thanks!”

He fled down into the house without a backwards glance. Harry watch him race away, and then let himself breathe like he needed to: deep, sharp breaths to fill his head with oxygen and settle his racing pulse. His cock was a solid heat in his trousers, camouflaged only by darkness and fine tailoring. And God spare him, if he went downstairs and found Eggsy had chosen the wrong room, had blundered into Harry’s bed and already taken himself in hand, he would not - could not - hold himself responsible for what would happen next. The curve of Eggsy’s arse against his thigh was now burned into his brain, along with the twist of his hips, the little stutter when Harry pushed him around. 

A sudden image of what could have happened swept over him: he could have walked Eggsy forwards to the short wall surrounding the roof terrace, pushed him against it. He could have dragged the jumpsuit down around his ankles and knelt between his legs, licked him open, rimmed his shivering arse until Eggsy was beating the wall with both fists and then stood up, pushed into him, fucked him until he was howling against the urban night sky. Could have. Should - not - have. Had not. 

_Well done_ , Harry told himself, sarcasm warring with genuine admiration for his own self control. 

He went back downstairs slowly, quietly. Both bedroom doors were shut, and for a moment he thought he could hear the frantic gasping he remembered so vividly from the speaker in his office, a few scant weeks ago - but no, the air was silent around him, it must be the rush of his pulse that he was hearing, the thrum of his overactive imagination. 

He opened his bedroom door. 

The bed was neatly made, untouched. No Eggsy. 

_Good_ , Harry made himself think. _Excellent. Indeed._

***

Breakfast was eggs Benedict with homemade hollandaise sauce, hand-squeezed Seville orange juice, freshly ground Nicaraguan coffee.

For all the attention Eggsy paid it, it could have been a plate of pebbles and wet cement. 

“Not a fan of the poached egg?” Harry suggested, watching Eggsy stare at the beautiful spill of golden yolk over his fork as if it were a slick of crude oil. 

Eggsy’s gaze flicked to him. “Uh. What?”

“Your breakfast,” Harry said. “You seem to be finding it… less than inspiring.” 

“Honest? I’m seriously hanging right now,” Eggsy said, which Harry translated as meaning he was feeling some after effects from the previous evening’s over-indulgence. 

Harry pushed the carafe of orange juice towards him. “Then start with this.”

“Fanks.”

Eggsy, Harry realised now, wasn’t meeting his eye. And that was - fine, and amusing, to some extent, but also worrying, because that implied distraction or preoccupation, and avoiding such things at this crucial time was the entire reason Harry hadn’t already bent him over his favourite armchair and broken him down into whimpering pieces. 

Harry ate a little more of his own breakfast, then took a sip of coffee and leaned back in his chair. “What’s on your mind?”

It was something marvellous to watch the soft rush of colour to Eggsy’s face; made Harry want to rip open his collar and see how far down it went. “Uh, nothing,” Eggsy said, then grimaced into his orange juice. His shoulders were stiff, hunched.

“Really.”

Eggsy stared at the juice in his glass for a few seconds, then peeked at Harry with a wince. “I kinda made a dick of myself, yeah?” he said, all expressive eyebrows and voice of pure resignation. 

And oh, that would not do. Harry leaned forwards, patted the tablecloth next to Eggsy’s hand. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. High time to offer him an out. “You think you’re the first candidate to get soused on martinis and then want to stay up all night talking about the universe?”

Eggsy had the grace to wince again. “That’s—not—“

“Nonsense,” Harry said, overriding his protest without letting him finish. “Honestly, whatever it is you’re worrying about, I’m sure it wasn’t as you remember. I’m not saying you weren’t a few sheets to the wind, but a dick?” He gave him a fond smile; he felt it reach his eyes with no difficulty at all. “Absolutely not.”

“Oh. Right,” Eggsy said, wearing the suspicious look of someone trying to read the small print in the reprieve they weren’t sure they deserved. “Guess it does go a bit… hazy.”

“That’ll be the port,” Harry said, and sat back in his chair again. He watched until Eggsy’s shoulders softened, then made an approving noise. “There. Don’t give it another moment’s consideration.” 

“Well, I’m still sorry,” Eggsy said. “Even if I wasn’t a dick, I was probably a twat.”

“Truly, a distinction drawn by the finest minds of the age,” Harry murmured, and Eggsy snorted.

“Fuck off, you know what I mean.”

“I’m quite sure I don’t.”

“Yeah, right,” Eggsy said, and then a moment later reached for his plate and started shovelling breakfast into his mouth.

Harry smiled behind his coffee cup. “Anyway,” he said, “would now be a good time to run through today’s itinerary? The final ingredients in becoming a modern knight. I thought it might be time to take you to the armoury… and then the arsenal… what do you say?” 

“Get in!” Eggsy said, muffled through a mouthful of toast, grinning at Harry as he chewed. 

“Thought as much,” he said, and sipped his coffee. Balance was restored.

***

Fitting Room One was occupied.

Fitting Room Two was out of the question.

Fitting Room Three beckoned. 

He followed Eggsy into the small tailoring antechamber, taking a moment to enjoy viewing him from all angles in the antique mirrors. He was going to have fun against these mirrors, some unspecified time in the future; one more challenge and Eggsy would be knighted, suited, booted, and available. The self-imposed restraints would fall away. Harry would be able to grab him by the scruff of the neck and bend him backwards, kiss him against the glass until he sank to the floor; he didn’t anticipate much protest on either count. He just had to resist the magnetism of Eggsy’s interest until then, until it was _appropriate_. 

Well, not long to wait now. One more challenge, that was it. Eggsy just had to shoot the dog - Harry was confident that was well within his abilities. 

Eggsy looked at him. “We going up or down?”

 _Both_ , Harry thought. But he could make himself wait. Not long now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes. There will be a sequel.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Training Tales AU: Training Interrupted](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4111459) by [Habernero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Habernero/pseuds/Habernero)




End file.
